Innholdsfortegnelse for August - September 2016 i Under the Radar

When Natasha Khan began dreaming up the concept that would become her fourth full-length release, she wasn’t sure she was making an album. In fact, she wasn’t even sure she was making music at all. She had been reading books on screenwriting and movie-making, including a book titled Driving Visions that explored the enduring symbolism of the road-trip in cinema. Soon, she saw in her mind flashes of a story about a woman on a journey of transformation, one that could take the shape of a film, an album, or both. “It suddenly hit me the idea of putting your heroine in a position where she can’t fulfill her obligation,” Khan recalls. “She is stopped, and what happens when all the plans that you’ve made backfire?…

It’s a bit of anomaly in the 21st century for a band to grow organically artistically while expanding their audience. Slow Club have deftly managed such a feat over the course of 10 years and four albums. Originally hailing from Sheffield, England, the duo, composed of multi-instrumentalists Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor, now reside in different cities—Watson in London and Taylor in Margate. But they still exude the verve and chemistry of an act in each other’s back pockets, and again pushed the envelope by recording in Richmond, VA’s Spacebomb Studios for their newest LP, One Day All of This Won’t Matter Anymore . With production assistance from Matthew E. White they cultivated a more bucolic, slow-burning Americana feel akin to Gillian Welch, Phil Spector, and…

Don’t pigeonhole Anders Trentemøller as an electronic artist. It’s a disservice to the sheer breadth of his musical acumen. This was reiterated minutes into a small talk conversation with him in which Detroit Techno was broached. He professed to have little knowledge of it, and even seemed bemused that he’d be compared to such a style of music. Favoring rock over dance, while certainly embracing the latter at times, has always been Trentemøller’s overriding ethos. Yet, it’s been an organic build to get to a place that really emphasizes rock for the Danish songwriter/producer, and has culminated with Fixion , his fourth LP. “It’s been a slow, natural process for the past 10 years, and there were a lot of people unsatisfied…

John Congleton, producer of Wild Beasts’ fifth album, Boy King , has an oversized dildo and a plastic Jesus guarding over the mixing desk in his Dallas, Texas studio, Elmwood Recording. Hayden Thorpe, central figure and one of the two vocalists for the British group, interpreted these items through the medium of the recording process as self-gratification and unwavering belief. During Wild Beasts’ time with Congleton, Thorpe never asked him about the significance of the two items, choosing instead to move forward with his own inference, which leant itself nicely to the underlying driving forces and dark themes of Boy King . Until now, Wild Beasts, and Thorpe in particular, have avoided the ominous shadows lurking in the corners of their lives,…

There’s a glam swagger permeating the self-titled debut album of Nashville’s Savoy Motel, twisting serpentine psych with Roxy Music-esque flourishes. It’s unlike anything released in 2016, with a steadfastly crafted image to complement the music, and that’s by design according to the band’s producer, bass player, and leader, Jeffery Novak. The band—also composed of drummer and co-lead vocalist Jessica McFarland, other co-lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist Mimi Galbierz, and lead guitarist Dillon Watson—had plenty of time to think about their presentation as they’ve been a band for a few years. But they’re just now hitting enough of a creative stride to craft an album strong enough for the public at large to hear, an accurate representation of what Novak envisioned they had in them at multiple levels. “It was like Television for…

Brothers often fight and clash. But they can also be the biggest motivators for each other. Take for example 19-year-old Brian D’Addario and his 17-year-old brother Michael. They’ve used their differences and similarities to create the catchy pop-rock of their Long Island, New York, band The Lemon Twigs. Brian says his style is more a “straight-forward kind of songwriting” that strives for concise lyrics. Meanwhile, he says Michael’s songs “tend to go off in different directions and are more embellished and less structured than his.” “I think his stuff has more spontaneity than a lot of my stuff has,” Brian says. “And mine has more of that dialed back structure that maybe his songs don’t have. I think those things complement each other because what can’t be found in my…

To conclude, we ask of Montreal frontman/main creative force Kevin Barnes some questions about endings and death. This year the ever-prolific Barnes has released his 14th of Montreal studio album, Innocence Reaches , via his longtime label Polyvinyl. The album was partially recorded in Paris, where Barnes lived at a friend’s home studio for two weeks, and is the follow-up to 2015’s Aureate Gloom . Barnes has usually found himself detached from contemporary music, but for Innocence Reaches he was inspired by modern electronic music, indie pop, and EDM, citing such current influences as Chairlift, Arca, and Jack Ü. The album is a bright and danceable indie pop beacon, with tracks that hark back to earlier of Montreal pop gems such as “Disconnect the Dots” and “Suffer for Fashion,” but…

The lyrics of Cass McCombs’ new album, Mangy Love , his eighth and ANTI- debut, may lean heavily on political and social issues but don’t let that fool you as election year fodder. It’s just a coincidence. Instead, he highlights events from two to three years ago like Occupy Wall Street. It’s a rarity to find a McCombs album that doesn’t find him singing about issues that are important to him. “Political issues are something I’ve always been personally involved in and organizing and participating in community direct action,” says McCombs. That desire to be involved stemmed from growing up in the East Bay region of San Francisco, where he was exposed to its long history of community organizing. It’s something that has helped connect him…

“We had gone through quite a bit of darkness.” That’s how Local Natives guitarist Taylor Rice describes the writing of the band’s 2013 album Hummingbird . The mood was largely dour, as the band members were going through difficult times in their lives, resulting in what Rice calls a “very cathartic record.” However, things have been more upbeat of late. The band’s five members—Rice, Kelcey Ayer, Ryan Hahn, Matt Frazier, and Nik Ewing—are all now in their 30s. Besides feeling more mature, they’ve enjoyed a great deal more optimism individually and collectively. Now the band is releasing their third and most ambitious album to date, Sunlit Youth . Taking control of one’s lives is a theme of the album, says Ayer, who plays keyboards. “You come…

Romanticizing the past can easily metamorphose into cheap nostalgia. On first blush, Metronomy’s newest, Summer 08 , feels like a prime candidate to succumb to this malady. Thankfully it doesn’t, due to frontman Joseph Mount’s ability to distance himself from situations and observe them objectively, all the while crafting an eminently enjoyable album at myriad levels. Mount’s married now, with two children, which has caused a sea change in his perspective. “I think the big difference is that if I’d made this record now as someone who’d had a failed relationship in my early 30s, a bit adrift, I think it would be more of a nostalgic, melancholy kind of record,” he says. “The difference is that’s not the case now. I feel good. [The album…

In the middle of April, the members of Viet Cong found themselves in an unusual position. It was a little over a year since their self-titled debut had established them as a post-punk buzz band, but they already had their sophomore album exactly how they wanted it: completely mixed, mastered, and its song titles chosen. But they still didn’t know what the name of the band was going to be. Having been confronted by Vietnamese expatriates who had been brutalized by the military regime from whom they had taken the Viet Cong moniker, the Calgary quartet led by vocalist Matt Flegel had spent the previous year pondering just how to rebrand themselves. They compiled list after list of prospective names, soliciting advice from their record label…

Chicago duo Whitney has an uncompromising and bold personality in more ways than one. It’s likely that some of that toughness in character came during writing their debut album during one of Chicago’s coldest winters between 2014-15. At that time drummer/vocalist Julien Ehrlich and guitarist Max Kakacek had rented a small apartment and were dealing with excessive heat more than bitter cold. “It was funny because our landlord set our radiator heat way too high,” says Kakacek. “So we actually recorded with the windows open and the radiator blasting since it was so cold out. If we didn’t have the window open it would be like 98 degrees in there.” Kakacek says they spent much of their time recording on a tape machine, casually experimenting with songs they were developing.…

In the 12 years since Kevin Barnes hit the reset button on of Montreal with 2004’s Satanic Panic in the Attic , his muses have pulled him in an almost unimaginable variety of directions. But despite detours into neo-prog, avant-garde electronica, and country-tinged Americana, Barnes never completely abandons his foundation: the music of David Bowie and Prince. Like both, Barnes is a prolific musical polymath, experimenting widely with styles, themes, and personas while still retaining the core of his aesthetic with every release. But unlike Bowie and Prince, Barnes has shown little interest in contemporary pop music. With Innocence Reaches that changes. Half-glam rock, half-electronic pop, the 14th of Montreal album is arguably Barnes’ most eclectic release. The chunky riff-rock of “gratuitous…

Band of Horses Why Are You OK (INTERSCOPE) For a while after 2012’s Mirage Rock , Band of Horses’ awkward, uncomfortable attempt at the mainstream, it seemed possible that the album would be the band’s last artistic statement. Which given the excellence of their first two records (heck, I even like 80% of Infinite Arms ) would have been a true shame for a band who seemed to be placing the need for commercial success ahead of quality. The future looked uncertain and long-term fans were fearful. Why Are You OK is a significant improvement on that record, and a genuine allaying of such fears. Granted, it is still not at the levels that propelled 2006’s debut, Everything All the Time , and 2007’s sophomore effort, Cease to Begin ,…

Angel Olsen’s last album, 2014’s Burn Your Fire for No Witness , was the sound of her breaking free. Filled with brash songs and strong statements, a certain pent-up aggression present in even its softer moments, the album broke her out of the mold that had previously characterized her art. Until Burn Your Fire , Olsen was viewed mostly as a solo songwriter, a singer with a spectacular voice, plaintively emoting over acoustic guitar backdrop. With Burn Your Fire , all that changed. With that change came success. Her base broadened. She went from playing half-filled bars and DIY spaces to theaters, performed 125 shows in a year, and topped it off with a performance on Late Show…

The genesis of U.K. quartet Glass Animals’ sophomore album, How to Be a Human Being , is one of the more offbeat origin stories you’ll read. The 11 tracks which comprise the record began as secret field recordings made of the people the band met on tour; snippets of dialogue clandestinely taped, at first, “for kicks” but later found to be a major source of inspiration. “All of these amazing people had these really incredible stories,” explains vocalist Dave Bayley. “Some very twisted, dark; some very beautiful; some very heartwarming; and some very heartbreaking stories of crazy lives.” As he listened and re-listened to the tapes, he began to create his own tales and characters inspired by the words he’d anonymously captured. “You ever play that…

Wye Oak’s fifth studio album Tween was a surprise release. But as singer/guitarist Jenn Wasner explains, the move was more a tribute to the nature of the material than an attempt to mimic industry heavy-hitters. The mini album of guitar-driven songs had an unorthodox route to their reveal, written and initially recorded after 2011’s Civilian before being set aside in favor of the synth-heavy pop experiments that became 2014’s Shriek . Given that, it seemed natural to present them to fans without the traditional buildup. “For me it was harkening back to a time when making music doesn’t have the baggage it does now,” she notes from her band’s tour van, just outside of their hometown Baltimore, Maryland.…

Just like the creeping amphibians that the song is named after, “Axolotl” lumbers along at an eerie rhythm all its own. But for Finn Andrews of the London-based band The Veils—who wrote the song as the opening track for their new album, Total Depravity— such creepiness is oddly wholesome. “My mother had axolotls as pets when I was a child. So I’ve always had them in my life, and always loved the word,” Andrews says. He adds that he “wrote the lyrics quicker than anything in my life, and sung them all into a shitty little microphone in my laptop, because I was in a rush to capture the strange energy of the song.” In a way, one could hardly blame Andrews for trying to recapture…

By any conceivable measure, Keegan-Michael Key and Mike Birbiglia are comedians at the top of their games. Key is fresh off a year which saw him wrap up his hit Comedy Central sketch show, Key & Peele ; in which he was invited by President Obama to perform at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and is now headlining comedies. Birbiglia recently completed the run on his acclaimed one-man, Off-Broadway show, and is now releasing his second feature as a filmmaker, Don’t Think Twice , to rave reviews. It’s incredible, then, to learn that these two successful individuals still question whether they’ve made the right choices within their careers. The philosophy they’ve chosen to follow is closely linked to Birbiglia’s new movie, which…

Relationships often can be strained for members of internationally touring bands. But for Melbourne, Australia, four-piece Terry, it’s not a concern. That’s because the band consists of two sets of couples—Amy Hill and Al Montfort and Xanthe Waite and Zephyr Pavey. “Leaving a partner for months at a time to tour is one of the hardest things about the international rock regime, so being together certainly solves that dilemma,” says Pavey. A chance trip to Mexico helped unify the couples and lay the groundwork for Terry. When Pavey and Montfort’s band Total Control’s show in Mexico City that followed their U.S. tour was canceled, they saw it as an opportunity to take a spontaneous, but somewhat ill-fated, couples’ trip. First there was a small earthquake. Later as a result of…

Sharon Jones fully knows the power of soul music. She also knows the power of cancer research and treatment. That’s because it’s helped her battle and fend off her pancreatic cancer the last three years. The treatments have gotten her to the point that she’s capable of doing what she truly loves, performing with her band The Dap-Kings in venues around the world. The chemotherapy and treatments continue today but she fights with purpose each day. “It’s a struggle. I have up days and down days. I think a lot of the pain meds have a big effect on how I’m feeling,” Jones says. “The treatments are intense, but I just take it one day at a time. I’m gonna keep going forward and battling through the pain. The battle…

Virgin Suicide’s moniker was fairly obviously inspired by the 2000-released Sofia Coppola directed film The Virgin Suicides . But somewhat surprisingly, film isn’t an overt influence on the songwriting of the Danish act’s sun-drenched pop numbers, according to their frontman Martin Grønne. It does manifest itself in the protracted process after the songs are written, however, which perhaps explains the compelling sonic appeal of their recombination of a pastiche of familiar ’60s and ’80s reference points on their self-titled debut album, co-produced and mixed by fellow Dane, The Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner. “I feel very inspired by a lot of graphic parts of sci-fi movies,” the singer says. “They run through my head during the mixing process, but not the songwriting. That’s not cinematic to me.…